The Sea of SAMR

 My biggest takeaway from our session about SAMR is the depth to which you can take a lesson plan through the use of technology. What was once a fairly simple, fairly casual lesson can be turned up to 11 with a few simple revisions and relatively easy to do additions. I was made most aware of this when we did the exercise of taking a good use of technology from our past and upgrading it on the tiers of SAMR. In no way did I consider any of the uses I came up with bad, in fact the uses I came up with seemed pretty good, if I do say so myself. What I did notice was the degree to which learning might take place when a different "lesson" was applied. There is nothing wrong with the more surface level substitution, in fact with my example it might even be a productive way to begin class. But as the levels of SAMR went deeper on the lesson, I realized the lesson became much more stand-alone. It evolved into something I might be comfortable giving as a full graded assignment, rather than some mundane task for students to complete. 

I also wanted to take this opportunity to share my infographic for SAMR, which reminds us that the levels of SAMR need not exclude the other levels, and that their blending provides greater use than each level individually.